Friday, April 30, 2021

Fantasy Novella Review: Return of the Sorceress by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 
Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 30, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Return of the Sorceress by Silvia Moreno-Garcia


Return of the Sorceress is a short novella (maybe novelette) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, out this June from Subterranean Press.  As I've loved practically everything by Moreno-Garcia, it was an easy choice for me to request this when it popped up on Netgalley, and I read and finished it the same day I got it.  Moreno-Garcia's work, as I've detailed in various other posts on this blog, is always fascinating and has covered a number of different genres and subgenres, so I was excited again to see her take on what was billed as a take on the sword and sorcery genre. 

And Return of the Sorceress is short but fun, and a solid take, featuring a Mesoamerican inspiration as its protagonist sorceress has to try to recover from betrayal and losing her power by recognizing what wrongs she did to get that power in the first place.  It's not anything super special, but it's very enjoyable for its short length and worth a read.  

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Thursday, April 29, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The House of Always by Jenn Lyons

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on May 11, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
The House of Always is book four of five of Jenn Lyons' "A Chorus of Dragons", her epic fantasy series that began in early 2019 with The Ruin of Kings (which I reviewed Here).  I've head a weird relationship with this series - I really didn't particularly love book 1 and wasn't really sure I was that interested in continuing further but took out book 2 from the library anyway on a trip to a Hockey Analytics Conference.  And I fell in love with that book, The Name of All Things, (Review Here) as the story expanded to new areas of the world and far more interesting (and far more queer) characters than were present in book 1, to go along with some really fun dialogue.  I then got a copy of book 3, The Memory of Souls (Review Here) early off Netgalley, which only got better, with all of the important characters from books 1-2 combining in an interesting plot that took a really interesting turn that intrigued me enough I actually wrote a second blog post to discuss spoilers.  Each of these volumes is LARGE - we're talking 500-600 pages each, but they each come with a helpful multipage recap of the prior book so that you never really have to reread the prior volume to start the next book in the series.  

So yeah, when The House of Always showed up on Netgalley, I was praying to get an early copy, and when I did get such an early copy, I couldn't resist reading it almost immediately.  And The House of Always....kind of delivers and rewarded my eagerness.  On one hand, this is a step back in plot quality, as the book brings back a number of minor characters not seen for a while, and focuses a lot of attention on them as the series' main plot doesn't really move much forward here.  On the other hand, the characters - both the familiar and the ones we haven't seen since book 1 - are tremendously developed, the dialogue is tremendous, the relationships are so easy to fall in love with, and I've already reread tons of moments, just like I did the prior book.  There isn't any plot concept/idea as fascinating as the one in book 3, but the characters here are so good that I still want to reread this for parts I might have missed and still desperately find myself wanting for more.  

Trigger Warning:  There are no full rape scenes this time (an issue with the series is the occasional occurrence of mind control rape, although usually off page), although there is one scene where one half of an F-F couple is unnecessarily rough and forces her partner to yell at her to stop (she does) in this book.  Might be an issue for some although if you've gotten this far in the series, I suspect you're okay.

SPOILER WARNING:  There is no way to talk about this book in any depth without spoiling the cliffhanger ending of book 3.  DO NOT go past this point here if you intend to read book 3 and haven't. 

Note: Again this book comes with a thorough recap of book 3, so anyone who hasn't read book 3 in a while will be able to pick this up with ease.  The recap is ONLY of book 3 though, and some of the characters featured in this book haven't showed up since Book 1, so if you haven't read books 1-2, you will be quite lost (and if you're like me and only read book 1 once and forgot a lot in it, it'll take a little bit to get you back up to speed, but this book does manage to do that).




  

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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

 




The Good Luck Girls is a young adult fantasy marketed as "Westworld" meets "The Handmaid's Tale", which well......okay, outlandish comparisons to dystopian prestige shows usually makes me less rather than more interested in reading such a book.  And to be fair, this book is essentially a feminist hybrid of the Weird-West and Dystopian SF/F genres, so I get the marketing decision to go with a Handmaid's Tale comparison, but well...don't expect any human-like robots like Westworld.  Still, I saw this and its sequel pop up on enough lists to take a chance on it anyway, despite its bad marketing comparisons.  

And the Good Luck Girls is pretty well done and pretty worth your time.  The story features five girls sold to a "welcome house" (whorehouse) as children by desperate families in a country where one race of people are forever stuck in debt and poverty, as they try to escape across the country to find some semblance of freedom.  The book has a habit of info dumping, especially early, and ends kind of abruptly even if in a satisfying fashion (although one that sets up the book's sequel) - but its characters and themes are really strong and I found myself really invested once I got through the book's first quarter.  In short, I'm happy I looked past the horrible marketing and I will be back for book 2 later this year.  

TRIGGER WARNING:  The Prologue of this book features a man attempting to rape a 16 year old girl before she hits him with a lamp as he chokes her.  Nothing further than that is shown on page, there is also essentially rape-as-backstory, as two of our five protagonists spent at least a year unwillingly as a "sundown girl" (prostitute).  As such the first act of the story may be difficult to read for many readers.  

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Monday, April 26, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng by K.S. Villoso

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on May 4, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng is the third and final book in K.S. Villoso's epic fantasy trilogy, "Chronicles of the Bitch Queen."  The Filipino-inspired epic fantasy trilogy, which began with "The Wolf of Oren-Yaro" (Reviewed Here) and continued with "The Ikessar Falcon" (Reviewed Here).  It's been one of more interesting epic fantasy series I've read over the past few years, with at its center a heroine who is utterly a mess, screwed up by expectations of others, the machinations of her father, the acts of her arranged husband, and a world that is perhaps as harsh at times to its rulers as its peasants.  The first volume, which I loved, dealt with themes of class, imperialism, sexism and double standards, but the second volume expanded the setting tremendously and instead seemingly focused upon the impossibility of doing the right thing when everything's against you, and the struggle against fates that everyone, from your father on down, seem to have set up for you.  It was an interesting winding book that I didn't quite love as much as the first, with it perhaps being a bit too ambitious in how much it was trying to setup at once.  

And for its part, The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng absolutely pays off all of the many many plot threads setup by its predecessor and in the process creates a really interesting conclusion to the trilogy.  Its a really really dark book, for an already dark series, especially in the book's final act, as it follows our heroine, Talyien, as she struggles first to save her son and then to save her country from monsters, from magic, from a madman, and perhaps most of all, from the ambition of her father from beyond the grave.  It's a story of a woman desperately trying to do the right thing while not having her life be defined by what others believe her fate to be, and of a woman who doesn't know if there's any possible love or happiness for her to feel on her own.  And the result is a book that's damn hard to put down, even as I'm not 100% sure I loved where it wound up.  

TRIGGER WARNING:  Rape (not depicted on page, but it happens to a side character), Animal Cruelty, Torture, Suicide, and possibly more I'm missing.  This gets really bad in the book's third act and honestly....it's excessive and kind of unnecessary and I wish the book hadn't gone there.  

Spoilers for books 1 and 2 are inevitable below.  Note that this book, like the 2nd book, contains a recap of book 2, so there's little need for a reread if you haven't read book 2 in a while.

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Friday, April 23, 2021

SciFi Novella Review: The First Omega by Megan E. O'Keefe

 
Disclaimer:  This novella was read as an e-ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for a review.  I promise that this did not affect my review in any way.  

The First Omega by Megan E. O. Keefe

The First Omega is a recently released novella by Megan E. O'Keefe, author of Velocity Weapon.  The novella came out honestly with little fanfare, but O'Keefe's space opera trilogy so far has been intriguing, if kind of a bit too overambitious with its epic scope, so I was interested in seeing what she would do with the shorter format of the novella.  

The answer is apparently a fairly type post-apoc SciFi western featuring an augmented (cyborg/modified) woman protecting convoys for a powerful corporation, starting to make her own mind up about how things should go, and being confronted by a choice of how to move forward.  It's a fun novella that doesn't outstay its welcome and has some interesting themes, but isn't particularly deep either.  So yeah worth a pickup even if it's not anything award worthy.  

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Thursday, April 22, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on May 4, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Sorrowland is the second novel by Rivers Solomon, the author of 2017's An Unkindness of Ghosts (Reviewed Here).  Solomon's work (they also wrote the 2019 novella, The Deep as well as parts of the first season of Serial Box's "The Vela") in the past has always been a tremendously powerful use of the genre to hit strong themes of the historical racist atrocities this country and world has perpetuated, whether that be through the translation of an antebellum plantation onto a generation ship (An Unkindness of Ghosts), dealing with the memories and survivors of Africans thrown overboard from slave ships (The Deep) or horrific treatment of refugees of a people whose world was destroyed by outsiders' greed (The Vela).  One thing their work has never been - and is unlikely to ever be - is easy to read, and so I went into Sorrowland expecting another whopper of a science fiction story.  

And Sorrowland definitely is another whopper, although this is a scifi/fantasy novel more closer in timeline to our own.  Once again Solomon centers the story around a protagonist struggling with identity in a cruel cruel world enacting horrors similar to our own - both by others (via experimenting on black bodies) and by a group themselves.  Its protagonist, Vern, is at first a teenager who doesn't fit in to her community - not into its ideas of gender, of sexuality, of the need to be religiously controlled, and who flees that community while pregnant (at age 15) with two children, only to discover more about herself, and about the world, than she could ever have imagined - or that anyone could seemingly have imagined.  Her story is the story of a girl persevering in the face of tremendous odds and atrocities, finding herself, and fighting back while never forgetting what has been done to her, and it's a really strong story. 

Trigger Warning:  Child Abuse, Spiritual Abuse, Child Pregnancy (and implied offpage rape as backstory), Unwilling Scientific Experimentation On African Americans.  

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Wednesday, April 21, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Reaper of Souls by Rena Barron

 




Reaper of Souls is the second book in a dark YA fantasy trilogy by Rena Barron, which began with last year's "Kingdom of Souls," which I reviewed here.  Kingdom of Souls was in many ways a fascinating book, featuring an African-myth inspired setting filled with gods, demons and orishas, a girl desperate for magic, and kingdoms and tribes all with various mythologies, gods, and beliefs about magic.  At the same time, I wasn't quite as enthused with how much it leaned into not just darkness, but well things like sexual abuse and rape as backstories, to go along with one instance of false identity girl on boy rape in the book's final third - it wasn't completely excessive....and yet it still didn't do enough with these lazy tired tropes to make it worth it to me.  So I was hoping, like some other books, that with the first volume out of the way - with the book ending on a massive change to the status quo - that the story wouldn't lean on those issues nearly as much.

And to my satisfaction, Reaper of Souls does just that, continuing its dark story with its new status quo in some really interesting ways, with strong characters (and new point of views besides our central heroine, Arrah), and pretty much no reliance on sexual abuse as motivation to go along with it all - heck, the book even course corrects for the rape mistake from the last book.  The story remains very dark, as we receive the backstory that was only hinted at last book, and our heroes must deal once more with demons of the past, unreliable and untrustworthy Orisha, and destinies that seem almost impossible to escape...but the darkness here works really well all in all.  The book's only weakness is once again featuring a bit of a rushed ending, but I am definitely all in on seeing how the trilogy concludes.  

Spoilers for book 1 after the jump:


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Tuesday, April 20, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

 




The Best of All Possible Worlds is the second novel by author Karen Lord, author of Redemption in Indigo (Review Here) and Unraveling (Review Here).  I read Redemption in Indigo earlier this year and really loved it, and after seeing a few people mention The Best of All Possible Worlds online, I had to reserve it from my library.  Lord's work with her characters in the prior two books I read was always fascinating and really well done - with Redemption in Indigo in particular being positively delightful and charming - and with this book moving from fantasy to scifi, I was really interested in seeing how it would turn out.  

And well, The Best of All Possible Worlds is a really delightful and charming hybrid of multiple genres - most notably of anthropological scifi and romance.  The story features an telepathic offshoot of humanity, their home destroyed, coming to a planet where some of their ancestors/cousins settled to try to find a way to rebuild their race, forcing them to discover all the ways those ancestors' cultures have changed over the ages.  It also features a scientist native of the planet trying to help the main diplomat of the telepaths around, and the two slowly falling for each other, despite their very different cultural ways.  The characters and peoples shown within are really well done, which makes this one yet another winner from Karen Lord.  

Trigger Warning: One small part features a character using telepathy to control his family, in a parallel essentially to using emotional abuse/manipulation in our real world.  I doubt it'll cause any concerns for most people, but it's there.  

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Monday, April 19, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

 




The Echo Wife is the latest novel by Hugo award winning (and multi-time nominated for lots of awards) author Sarah Gailey.  I've had an interesting appraisal of Gailey's novel-length fiction (When We Were Magic, Magic for Liars)....their work has always been incredibly interesting, bringing up really interesting themes to go along with fascinating characters, but I've always felt that those works never quite managed to stick the landing: there usually has been like one thing that bugs me at the end of each work to prevent it from truly working perfectly for me.  Still, when I say "incredibly interesting", I really mean it, and as such, I pretty much always will check out the latest of their work, and so I had reserved a copy of The Echo Wife well in advance of publication with my library.

And The Echo Wife is a hell of a novel, a scifi tale that uses the idea of a cloned person who has been programmed or conditioned as to certain behaviors to tell a tale of abuse that is incredibly powerful and both really hard to put down despite being hard to read.  Of note:  I've seen this described as a domestic thriller and that's technically true, but the heart of this novel isn't really that of the thriller genre - the book has less interest in whether or not the protagonist Evelyn will get away with what happens than about how what happens causes her to rethink how she herself was conditioned by abuse she received as a child and as a spouse, and everything in between.  It again has perhaps some ending issues....and yet, the ending is so powerful, and a bit depressing, that I'm not sure it even matters.  This is a tour de force that I'm going to be thinking about for a long time.

TRIGGER WARNING:  Parental abuse (physical, emotional), Spousal Abuse (emotional) and the implications of abuse in general - and abusive conduct by our protagonist as an Employer and person in power as well.  Abuse and its impacts, and whether one can really escape being shaped by it, are the central themes of this novel, so if you can't bear to read that, this book is not for you.  There is absolutely no sexual abuse however.  


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Friday, April 16, 2021

SciFi Novella Review: Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

 



Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters is I believe the debut* novella by Aimee Ogden (who has other short fiction credits).  Oddly, thanks to an eARC I actually read her second novella, which comes out in April - Local Star - a few months back and reviewed it already on this blog - and I enjoyed its space opera polyamorous queer story a good bit.  So I was very interested to see how this novella, advertised as a space opera reimagining of The Little Mermaid, would be.  

And while I'm not sure Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters will necessarily remind anyone of The Little Mermaid who hasn't seen that comparison beforehand, it's still a solid enjoyable novella with some really interesting themes and characters.  Like her other novella, it's very much a queer tale, featuring a girl from a sea dwelling race who change genders who had a childhood friend, a witch, turn her into a land-dweller so she could be with the man she loved....only to be forced to confront her past choices once her love falls ill with a plague.  The themes of love, of choices not taken, and of being okay with that in the end and still finding happiness work pretty well.  

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Thursday, April 15, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim

 



Scavenge the Stars is the first in a young adult low fantasy duology by author Tara Sim.  The duology is an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, featuring as one of its two protagonists a girl sold to a debtor ship as a little girl before coming back fully grown, pretending to nobility in order to enact her revenge.  The book was originally published by a Disney imprint, but if you're expecting a book filled with light fare, you'll be surprised, this book is hardly grimdark but features some really dark moments and some serious themes to go along with everything.

But Scavenge the Stars makes that darkness generally work really really well.  Both its main characters, Amaya, the girl who wants revenge but finds herself slipping without an identity, and Cayo, the boy who is trying to recover from a gambling/alcohol addiction to be the man his sister wants him to be, are really really strong and the plot gives them substantial room to develop in fascinating ways.  More experienced readers will see a bunch of the twists coming fairly early in the plot, but the book executes them very well, with the exception perhaps of one deus ex machina at the end which helps set up the following book.  In short, this is a really strong YA fantasy and I will be very much looking forward to reading the sequel.  
Note: I read this in audiobook, and I did enjoy the reader a lot, so this is definitely worth your time in that format.  

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Wednesday, April 14, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 27, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.       

Folklorn is a novel by Angela Mi Young Hur from publisher Erewhon Books, which as a new publisher of off-beat SF/F and magical realism has really been putting out a ton of great stuff.  So I was already going to be interested in Folklorn anyway but I've also seen some high praise for it on twitter by a few writers I follow.  So yeah, I was really excited to pick up this one to see it for myself.

And Folklorn is like few novels I've read honestly, but it is absolutely tremendous.  A story of magical realism following a first generation Korean-American physicist feeling torn between worlds, between the stories of her seemingly gone-mad mother and the abuse of her now aged father, the racism and prejudice she has felt all over the world, and how all of those things seem to haunt her wherever she goes - literally perhaps as she begins to see her childhood imaginary friend guiding her toward...something. Don't get me wrong, it's not an American story really (it takes place as much in Sweden and also begins in Antarctica), but it absolutely the story of a woman, due to her Korean heritage and family, always seemingly out of place no matter where she goes, and it's utterly fascinating and compelling from beginning to end, even as it's often difficult to read.  

Trigger Warning:  The story features an abusive (physical) father and what can arguably be considered an abusive (verbally) mother, although such scenes are more often described than actually seen in the physical violence sense.  

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Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Fantasy Novella Review: Tower of Mud and Straw by Yaroslav Barsukov

 


Tower of Mud and Straw by Yaroslav Barsukov

Tower of Mud and Straw is a novella that was serialized in four parts in Metamorphoses Magazine in 2020, the first part of which can be found online here.   It also was perhaps the biggest surprise finalist for the 2021 Nebula Awards, being nominated over a number of seemingly more notable novellas.  Naturally, with Nebula nominations coming out the week before Hugo nominations were due, I was immediately inspired to pick this one up to see if it was really worth an adjustment to my own Hugo ballot.*

*The Nebulas are voted for by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), so obviously I do not have a vote there.*

And well, uh, The Tower of Mud and Straw felt to me to honestly be more of a mess than anything.  It features a number of notable ideas and character traits and actions that are clearly inspired by or appeal to today's world (the protagonist begins the story having disobeyed an order to gas protestors, for example), but even in serialized novella form doesn't seem to have enough length to really make much hay of them all - leading to the story seeming to flip flop back and forth on plot devices constantly.  This is not unintentional - the protagonist remarks about it in the last act for instance - but it inspires more whiplash than anything else, muddling any message or character development that seems to be intended.  

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Monday, April 12, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Stoneskin by KB Spangler

 




Stoneskin is a 2017 short novel from KB Spangler, best known for her A Girl and her Fed webcomic and its related self-published novels and stories, as well as for her editing and presence on twitter.  I've really enjoyed the webcomic and Spangler's social media presence (and editor of much of Ursula Vernon's self-published work), so I definitely wanted to check out Spangler's unrelated work like Stoneskin for a while.  Stoneskin is a bit of an oddity - it's a novel billed as a prequel to a series that wasn't even out at the time of its release - Spangler's "Deep Witches Trilogy."  But after a twitter follow kept promoting both books this week, I finally gave in and read this one.  

And Stoneskin is really interesting, if unsurprisingly not really complete as an installment.  The story revolves around a sentient energy force called the "Deep" that fills the galaxy which possesses the ability to move stuff...if it wants to and/or is directed to by those it befriends.  Those people, the Witches, use it to speed up logistics - moving people around the galaxy faster than with conventional FTL drives - around the galaxy.  The presence of such a force in this galaxy and those who can interact with it, presents a really interesting concept with interesting themes, and Stoneskin revolves around a young girl who is thrown into the role of a Witch way too early, and who has to figure out what it means to interact with the Deep, in a setup for the upcoming trilogy that doesn't quite stand on its own.  Still as an introduction to this world and the upcoming trilogy, it certainly has me really intrigued.  


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Saturday, April 10, 2021

Seventy-Five SciFi/Fantasy Works You Should Read

 


It's been about six years since I began to read science fiction and fantasy again, after a long stretch between High School and Law School where I barely read any books at all.  And if you follow me on twitter, you may have seen me occasionally post pictures of my spreadsheet of books read, which is now over 800 books long.  So I figured it was about time I posted a list of the books that I've read that I think people absolutely SHOULD read, if they haven't already.  

This list is of course only my opinion, and even for my opinion is not meant to be an exclusive list - it also errs on the side of more recent than older books, because that's what I read.  I will also include together series as a single work on this list, unless books in a series are clearly stand-alone and worthy of reading in and of themselves - and if I do choose a series, I'll highlight which entries in particular are worth your time.  If I've reviewed the books on this blog, I'll link the reviews, but otherwise, this will not be a post of deep thoughts, just the names of books and a quick list of subcategories those books belong to and themes contained within.  

Okay enough disclaimers, let's start.  These books are in no particular order.  Also please note that the number of themes/subgenres listed for each book has nothing to do with how good each book is:


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Thursday, April 8, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Engines of Oblivion by Karen Osborne

 




Engines of Oblivion is the second book in Karen Osborne's "Memory War" space opera duology, which began last year with her Architects of Memory (which I reviewed here).  Architects of Memory was an....odd book for me: on one hand, its themes of the importance of memory to our own being was interesting and its dueling anti-capitalist and anti-nationalist (kind of, bear with me a bit) messages worked decently.  On the other hand, as the book went on, there were frequently points where I had honestly no clue what was going on, which prevented everything from hitting as hard as it could, and outside of our main duo of characters, everyone else really didn't get too much depth.  So I was a bit unsure of what I would find in the sequel, or even if I'd finish it.  

And yeah, Engines of Oblivion is as, if not more, confusing than its predecessor, at least to someone who reads like I do so quickly.  And it again doesn't quite have much depth in its side characters.  Yet despite my confusion, despite the lack of depth, the new* main character's storyline more than made up for all of that, as the story once again tells a strong story of memory, of individuality and personality, and of the monsters of capitalism, all in a space opera plot featuring strange alien tech and whatnot.  I probably wouldn't read a third book in this series (though I don't think there will be one), but I'm interested in seeing where Osborne's writing goes from here.  

*well, new to this book, the character was a side character in book 1.* 

Spoilers for book 1 follow: 

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Wednesday, April 7, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 13, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Readers of this blog may know that I try to read books from authors of a large variety of backgrounds.  Its an approach that has been tremendously rewarding, with it introducing me to worlds and experiences far beyond my own, by peoples with their own different cultures and difficulties that I have or will likely ever have in my life - and these experiences have led to tremendous stories, with tremendously powerful themes.  But one thing I have not done is managed to do is read many SF/F stories based upon my own heritage - namely that of Ashkenazi Judaism*.  Rena Rossner's 2018 novel, Sisters of the Winter Wood (My Review Here) was one of the few books I've read that did do so, and when I saw her second boo - this book - would feature 3 Jewish sisters in 14th Century Europe, I pretty much had to give it a read.  

*This is not to say that Jewish fiction is a small genre, just that I have not read much of it, especially in where it intersects with SF/F*  

Of course, the thing with reading your own heritage is that you feel far more connected to the material, and you can absolutely feel more when things go wrong for people like you.  And as The Light of the Midnight Stars is essentially a tragedy, showing hard the struggle of 14th century Jewry, it hit me brutally hard.  Bu at the same time, when the material itself goes in problematic directions, it's a lot easier to tell.  And well The Light of the Midnight Stars' attempt to mix together old Eastern European folktales with the stories of such Jews is often very problematic, especially as it attempts to use real actual historical characters in the end.  The result is a book that I sadly cannot recommend to others, and feel disappointed about in how it wasted a really compelling tale of Jews torn between the forces of oppression and assimilation & hiding.  

TRIGGER WARNING:  Rape.  


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Tuesday, April 6, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Gifting Fire by Alina Boyden

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 13, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Gifting Fire is the sequel to Alina Boyden's "Stealing Thunder", which I reviewed here.  Stealing Thunder was advertised as the first major publisher published adult fantasy featuring a trans woman protag by a trans woman author, and while I had some doubts about that claim (see that review), it was still a very enjoyable book.  The series is based upon Boyden's research into historical communities of trans-women in India/Pakistan (Hijras) and features a fantasy world with dragon-like creatures based upon that area of the world, which worked really well in the first book, even if the overall plot wasn't much special.  

Gifting Fire is very similar in a lot of regards, once again featuring a plot where a lot of things seem to go right for the heroine at perfect times to allow her to prevail in a seemingly impossible situation, but portraying it all in a way that is still incredibly fun and enjoyable.  At the same time, it leans far more into transphobic behavior in the antagonists of the story, and features our heroine in a predicament where the possibility of being beaten or worse is very present, which is not really what I like to read.  Still, the dragon-like zahhaks and aerial combat is very fun to read, our heroine's scheming and fighting is really enjoyable, and the world is generally well done, so if you liked Stealing Thunder, you'll enjoy this one.

Trigger Warning: Transphobia/Misgendering.  A good good amount of it.  Spousal/Physical Abuse and Rape as Backstory.  

Note:  This is a satisfying wrapping up of a complete story, but it does not stand alone of Stealing Thunder, which you need to read first or you will be lost.  


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Monday, April 5, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor

 




Ikenga is a middle-grade novel written by SF/F author Nnedi Okorafor, known for some of her great adult fiction (Who Fears Death, Lagoon, The Book of Phoenix, Binti) and her YA fiction (Akata Witch/Warrior), much of which is based on West African culture and myth.  Ikenga is advertised as her first middle-grade novel (I'd argue the Akata series also fits that age group), and is definitely a more child-friendly story, featuring a boy in a town in Nigeria who loves comic books and who gains the power to transform into a shadowy Hulk like being.  It's a very short novel and so I picked it up in audiobook in a week where I knew I'd have less time to listen in the car.  

And well....Ikenga is fine for middle grade audiences, highly enjoyable in its Nigerian spin on tales that will be familiar to American comics readers (sort of a combination of Shazam, Batman, and the Hulk) until the story's final act, where it kind of fizzles out.  The story for the most part feels very aimed at the younger span of middle-grade audiences, at least again for the first 2/3, when it tries seemingly to bring in more complicated topics in the final act.  But while the whole package might still be enjoyable for the younger audiences its aimed at, flaws or no, this is not one of those middle grade or young adult books that adults will find that worthwhile in the end. 

Note: I read this in audiobook, and the reader is very good.  Not sure how much kids in this age group listen to audiobooks, but if they do, it's a solid choice of format to read the book in.  

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Friday, April 2, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Unity by Elly Bangs

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 13, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.      

Unity is the debut novel from author Elly Bangs.  It's a science fiction novel that combines a number of ideas - a future in which humanity is barely surviving after multiple near-apocalypses, mad max-esque (and bioshock-esque) landscapes within that world in which it's incredibly hard to survive, and most prominently the idea of transferring and/or combining minds inside single bodies to make a new being with better understanding of the world.  It really explores that last concept - the idea of the titular "unity" - in multiple ways, through its 2 main viewpoint characters (sorta).  

But well, I don't think it really works too well, as its character work doesn't always quite work (particularly with one of our two protagonists) and I'm not sure its explorations of its central ideas of unity really work out when I think about how they play out here.  Those central ideas certainly are interesting - again the idea of merging consciousnesses to try and fix problems of conflict, to try and combine brilliant minds to increase human problem solving so they can deal with global problems, and to try and avoid violent minds in those consciousnesses to try to ensure a better unified mind - but the book often seems to throw out complications about parts of those ideas without directly or much indirectly exploring them and its almost as frustrating as anything.  I'll try to better explain after the jump.

TRIGGER WARNING:  Suicidal Thoughts/Attempts, Rape Attempt through Body Switching.  

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Thursday, April 1, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Written in Starlight by Isabel Ibañez

 




Written in Starlight is the sequel to Isabel Ibañez' "Woven in Moonlight," a Bolivian-culture inspired YA fantasy novel from last year (which I reviewed here).  Woven in Moonlight dealt well with themes like oppression, colonization, figuring out one's identity, and realizing that one's own culture may have made its prosperity from the blood of others.  At the same time, while its main character is done well, the story's handling of these themes is pretty predictable and similar to other books which feature those themes, which don't make the book standout except perhaps for its setting being not the usual one for Western audiences.  

Written in Starlight follows up from its predecessor by switching its protagonist to Catalina, the former ruler and best friend to the old protagonist Ximena, who couldn't let go of her right to rule when confronted with a chance for peace amidst another people - and found herself exiled as a result.   I very much expected Catalina's story to go in a similar direction to Ximena's in this book, and while there are similar themes, Written in Starlight takes on those themes in a very different, more introspective way, that worked really well.  As a complement to Woven in Moonlight, it works really well and I was really happy I decided to continue with this sequel even if didn't quite love the first book as much as others.

Spoilers for Book 1 are inevitable below:

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